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Lessons Learned in May 2017

Posted by Steven

This is what I learned in May 2017:

Microservices are THE hype nowadays. Because I didn't see a reason to include this technology in my project and there are so many other cool things out there, I didn't invest the time to learn much about Microservices. From talks and events, I realize that I should spend time learning about this stuff. I plan organizing an event where I can get a hand on this. Let's see if it works. :)

At the last HackTalk in Wolfsburg, I learned more about TravisCI. I'm using TravisCI since a couple of years because it's so easy to integrate into Github repositories. It's really a nice "little" CI. :)

In "KaffeeKlatsch" 02/2017, one of the magazines created by the Java community, I read about Java Faker, a small library that creates random test data.

Once again, I thought about my current process of using the Git squash command. Currently, I squash all commits on feature branches right before merging them into develop. This gives me a nice, readable Git graph. The downside is losing the single small commits from during the development. Also, analysis of the Git history is made harder / impossible because often I am the one squashing feature branches of my team mates. Because of this, I thought about changing my policy and forget about squashing. However, I read about open source projects that are doing the exact same thing to keep a nice, clean history. Also, analysis of our Git graph would be possible if I am not the one squashing, but every developer squashes his own branch. That way, the information of who made the change is kept. So, I'll continue squashing. :)

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from Paul Hickey from structure101.com. I've been given a prerelease version of the new Structure 101 Developer plugin for IntelliJ IDEA. After several feedback mails back and forth, I decided to buy the plugin and try it with my current main project and of course my smaller projects. Paul is a really nice and patient guy - thanks for letting me play with your new toy! :)

The other day, a fellow developer told me that Sourcetree can rename Git branches easily. I had to do this for the first time and couldn't find a way to do it in Intellij IDEA or GitKraken. Seems like this is Sourcetrees killer-feature. ;)